INDIANAPOLIS — The best player on college basketball’s best team could not hide his frustration.
Yaxel Lendeborg hated that the knee and ankle injuries he suffered two days earlier were preventing him from showcasing his All-American form with Michigan locked in a tight battle against UConn on Monday night and the national championship at stake.
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He winced and punched the air in frustration when he airballed an open jump shot. He walked off the floor with his jersey between his teeth after he blew a defensive assignment. He even described his first-half performance to Turner Sports sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson as “awful” and “super weak.”
“I was very tentative,” Lendeborg said. “I felt like I was holding our team back. I felt like we could have been up way more early in the game. I kept having opportunities to make a play and I couldn’t make a play.”
One of the biggest reasons Michigan was able to stave off UConn and grind out a 69-63 victory was because Lendeborg’s teammates refused to allow the Big Ten player of the year to let his disgust with himself fester. Nimari Burnett patted Lendeborg on the chest and told him his teammates were with him. L.J. Cason urged Lendeborg to stop being so hard on himself and reminded him that the Wolverines wouldn’t have reached the national title game without him. Roddy Gayle told him an off-color joke to get him to stop playing “soft” and to play more aggressively.
“Yax is a very emotional guy, so I think it was my duty to push him to get out of his feelings,” Gayle said. “I felt like we needed Mad Yax, not Sad Yax.”
Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg is attended to by training staff during the first half of the national championship game. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
(Patrick Smith via Getty Images)
Mad Yax finally showed up in the final six minutes of Monday’s game as Michigan was trying to stave off a desperate UConn comeback. The 6-foot-9 do-it-all forward scored seven of his 13 total points over a span of 90 seconds, burying a 3-pointer, putting back his own miss and drawing a foul, and sinking a pair of free throws to keep the Wolverines’ advantage at nine despite a couple of clutch UConn 3-pointers.
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“We understood that he wasn’t 100% physically,” Burnett said. “I mean, he probably wasn’t even 50%, but he persevered for that though and he did whatever it took for his team to win. He sprinted through screens even though his body didn’t feel like going. That just shows you his selflessness, his selfless nature to give to this team and help us win a national championship.”
Lendeborg’s grit helped Michigan complete a dominant season with the program’s first national title since 1989. The Wolverines (37-3) pummeled the likes of Gonzaga and Villanova in non-league play, won the outright Big Ten title by four games and then demolished their first five NCAA tournament opponents by an average of nearly 22 points.
The driving force behind Michigan’s success was Lendeborg blossoming into the “Dominican LeBron,” as teammates nicknamed him. It was the best year of Lendeborg’s life — and one he didn’t see coming a few years ago when he believed that playing college basketball wasn’t for him.
Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg looks on after the Wolverines beat the UConn Huskies 69-63 in the 2026 NCAA tournament national championship game. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
(Patrick Smith via Getty Images)
Lendeborg thought that working a warehouse job was going to be his life, but his mom, Yissel Raposo, refused to accept it. She forced him to board a flight to Yuma, Arizona, and go to junior college at Arizona Western.
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That was the start of a five-year journey that took Lendeborg from the anonymity of junior college basketball, to a breakout season at UAB last year, to becoming the centerpiece of this formidable Michigan team. He was averaging 21 points and 7.3 rebounds per game in the NCAA tournament before his ill-timed injuries against Arizona on Saturday threatened to end his season early.
“I definitely felt like I did all this for nothing in that moment,” Lendeborg said Saturday. “I definitely had to calm down for a little bit, speak to myself, get out of my thoughts.”
Two days of nonstop treatment allowed Lendeborg to take the floor on Monday night with just some tape on his injured knee. He didn’t have the game of his dreams, but that didn’t diminish his joy when Michigan captured the national title.
Championship cap perched on his head and blue and yellow confetti pooled at his feet, he wrapped his mom in a bear hug as soon as he saw her.
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How did Raposo feel at that moment?
“So happy,” she said. “Grateful. Blessed.”
Did she have any doubt her son would push through the injuries?
“No, because he’s a warrior,” Raposo responded.
Before she could say more, Lendeborg interrupted with a “Come on, mom!” It was time for him to cut his strand of net.
For Lendeborg, a day of hellacious frustration ended with a moment of pure joy.
